Ph.D. student Michael Boateng spent his summer out west, interning at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and attending a workshop at the Argonne National Laboratory, all in the pursuit of AI and high-performance computing education. But along the way, he had new experiences he won’t soon forget.
One day this summer, Michael Boateng looked outside to find a small bear raiding his garbage cans.
It’s something he would likely never see on the campus of Georgia Tech, where he’s studying to get his Ph.D. from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE).
“It was pretty cool,” he said. “I got the video, and now it’s my go-to summer story.”
This summer he traded the greenery of Atlanta for the sands of New Mexico to intern at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), learning how to better integrate high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) into his power systems research.
On top of that, he also got to spend a couple of weeks at the Argonne National Laboratory, another prestigious research lab near Chicago, for a workshop on high-end computing.
“I really feel like my understanding of how to apply computing resources effectively to my work grew so much this summer,” he said. “If you don’t know how to utilize these machines, it slows down your work and effectively wastes all the extra compute power.”
But it was the moments in between work, including the ones with bears, that really made for a special summer.
ECE Takes You There
This story is part of the "ECE Takes You There" summer series highlighting student, faculty, and alumni adventures across the globe! From exciting internships to international travel, discover how the ECE community is exploring, learning, and growing.
New Mexico
As a Ph.D. student studying machine learning (ML) and optimization techniques for transmission system-level problems in the Georgia Tech AI Institute of Advances in Optimization (AI4OPT) lab, the chance to work at Los Alamos was a great opportunity.
His main research focus is on AC feasibility restoration, a process that ensures electricity dispatch remains physically possible during high power grid usage.
“Estimating active power flows across transmission lines seems fast to solve on paper, but when it’s tested on large power grids, there are so many variables to consider,” Boateng said. “Hence, you often violate at least one law of physics, which causes problems for the grid. The ML pipeline we developed helps to better estimate the power flows and restore feasibility to the grid.”
He got the chance to test the ML tools working with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s electricity supplier, as part of the internship.
“It was a valuable experience because it really helps put into perspective that this is a real-world problem we are trying to solve,” Boateng said. “It also helped me understand the tools we use and how they can be better applied to my work.”
Boateng visited landmarks like the Ethyl the Whale statue made of hand-recycled HDPE plastic on the campus of the Santa Fe Community College in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
One of the many landscapes Boateng saw during his travels throughout the desert.
There wasn’t much rest for Boateng during the three-month internship. When he wasn’t working hard in the lab, he was making the most of his time outside of it.
As a Los Alamos intern, he got to tour other nearby state-of-the-art facilities. The most memorable being the particle accelerator at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center.
“It was surreal because I’d only ever heard of particle accelerators in movies like The Flash,” Boateng said. “Walking alongside a real, half-mile-long beamline operating at 800 megaelectron volts was incredible.”
Before it became the LANL we know today, Los Alamos was famous for being home to one of the main development sites for the Manhattan Project during World War II. Boateng visited many of the historic sites, including Manhattan Project National Historical Park, Robert Oppenheimer’s house, Fuller Lodge, and Ashley Pond.
He also spent a couple of weeks serving as a STEM volunteer teaching electronics to K-12 students in the STEM Santa Fe program.
“Electronics teaches you to look at a problem and figure out how to make something work,” he said. “That’s something I’ve benefited from myself, and it was great to teach younger students this skill.”
Manhattan Project National Historical Park Sites
Chicago
In the middle of the internship, Boateng took a two-week detour to the Argonne National Laboratory, home to one of the fastest supercomputer clusters in the world, Aurora.
He was there for the annual Argonne Training Program for Extreme-scale Computing, a competitive program that only accepts 75 applicants from around the world and provides intensive training in the most current high-end computing system practices.
“The experience allowed me to learn complex HPC strategies for the collaborative work I was doing at LANL, as well as for more advanced AI and ML computations that I can apply to my research at Georgia Tech,” Boateng said.
The chance to work in world-class facilities was significant, but the people Boateng met at Argonne proved just as influential.
“There were a couple of fellow power grid researchers there, but I also met people that were in physics, chemistry, biology, and aerospace just to name a few,” he said. “It was cool to see all these different fields coalesce around HPC and see how we’re all using it for our work.
There was also a common thread running from New Mexico to Chicago, as Argonne was another main research hub for the Manhattan Project. Boateng got to see Argonne-specific monuments and learn more about the nationwide collaboration of the project.
During his time in Chicago, he also gained an appreciation for deep-dish pizza, which he tried for the first time at Giordano’s.
“It was really amazing,” he said. “I thought I’d be able to eat a whole one by myself. My friends told me I could not, and they were right. I was only able to eat two slices.”
Boateng tried deep-dish pizza for the first time during his trip to Chicago.
At the end of the two weeks, every workshop participant at Argonne was given a piece of the lab’s retired peta-scale supercomputer, Mira.
When he returned to Atlanta this fall, Boateng put his piece in a display case on his desk as a reminder of everything he learned this summer.
“It’s like I'm taking all the knowledge, lessons, and friends I made back with me,” he said. “And all the friends I made have pieces from that same machine, so it symbolizes us becoming a cluster and coming together to solve problems.”
Boateng at the Willis Tower Skydeck with colleagues.
A piece of Argonne's retired peta-scale supercomputer, Mira, was given to Boateng after the workshop to commemorate his time there.
Boateng visited Cloud Gate, also known as The Bean, among many other sites in Chicago.
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